On May 28th, 2009 we held our 5th club meeting for this year.  This was also the clubs first Build-It-Night where club members learned about the great uses for Anderson (ARES) Connectors (also called power poles) and built Anderson extension cords.  We covered the two techniques for installing the connectors (Solder / Crimp) and talked about the nation standard, RED on LEFT.  Documentation about the connectors can be found in the Documentation link under Training Resources.

In addition to the Anderson Connector discussion we also talked about our involvment in Country Fest and a request for Volunteers was made.  If you are interested in helping out with the 5K, Parade or at Command on June 20th, please let Brett Neilson (KC7IIB) know as soon as you can.  Schedules for the event will be made in the coming weeks.  If you have never worked and event before, this is a great time to learn.  These are really low traffic events that give newer opperators a chance to test their equipment and enhance their skills.

For the month of April, we held our club meeting the night of the 23rd at the Daybreak community center.  As April was earthquake awareness month in the state of Utah we had our very own Pat Malan (N6VLU) talk about lessons learned from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.  Pat showed a video with footage taken by various news crews after the quake and also played audio from one of the local amateur Radio repeaters.  It was a great insight as to what will actually happen in the hours right after a major incident.

In addition to Pats presentation we also discussed and took a club vote regarding the affiliation of the Oquirrh Lake Radio CLub with Salt Lake County ARES.  It was presented by ARRL Section Manager, Mel Park NM7P, that the club affiliate with Salt Lake County ARES as opposed to creating our own independant ARES organization.  This concept obviously has a lot of questions about how it will work, but the main key is that our focus will remain on the City of South Jordan.  This was also the concern of city officials when presented with the idea of affiliation.  The main goal is the ability to officially claim that we are an ARES affiliated group which would help to attract additional members and is more recognizable in the Emergency Management industry.  This had been previousl discussed by the board and was put to a club vote and passed.  Therefore we will be reaching out to the ARRL Section Manager and the the Section Emergency Manager to move forward with the process. 

 We had our March club meeting on the 26th at the Daybreak Community Center.  We had 9 people in attendance plus a special guest.  Mel Parks NM7P (ARRL Section Manager) joined the meeting to show his support for our organization and offer the support of the ARRL if we choose to affiliate as an ARRL club.  We will be discussing this in the coming weeks and determine what our course of action should be.  After the meeting Brett and Mel also discussed the concept of ARES and what options the OLRC has in that reguard.  The idea of forming our own ARES group has been tossed around for the last two years and Brett and Mel believe they have come up with a potential solution.

The presentation this month was a high level overview of the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS).  The presentation was mostly created by Ed Sim (N7RTA), but he was on business travel and was not able to attend the meeting.  The presentation has been posted to Documentation / Training Resources section on the site.

Also for those that ordered Club Shirts, they have arrived and were distributed at the meeting.  If you were unable to get yours, please get in touch with Brett to pick your up or they will be at the next in-person meeting.  Also if you would like to order one please let Brett know ASAP.